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At 7/11/07 09:41 PM, BoMToons wrote

Ok, my 1st suggestion is to optimize it to prevent lag. Even in ie it was way laggy. It's probably due to all the filters you're using. A lot of the stuff could be drawn exactly the same way without filters (ie: thick white outlines).

Most of the white outlines are made from lines not from glow filters... so I'm shit outta luck

Lastly, use more "cacheAsBitmap" because a lot of the stuff, since it doesn't scale, wouldn't :hit the cpu as hard if it were cached as a bitmap.

this is true if the object isn't rotating (I'm pretty sure), and most of the objects I have rotate, but I did cache the clouds, the player, and all the other non-rotating items as bitmaps...

As for gameplay, I'd love to see a progressive bg...like, from the depths of the earth (molten lava etc) up through different levels of the earth's crust, then into the sky, then into the atmosphere, then into space, past some planets, etc...kinda like that wonchop game that came out a while back

The only problem with that is I don't want to be considered a copy cat, have my score lowered, and risk not being on the front page...

Also, I'd like to see some powerups for the level of control, so the guy's momentum gets more easily controlled

I do have power ups, but obviously they are not labeled well enough... can these kids read anyway???

also, it'd probably be good to flash up what the good stuff is and what the bad stuff is right before the game starts

I'll have instructions, this is a very preliminary version of the game

and also give some feedback in the HUD when you hit something good and when you hit something bad.

Good Idea!

Otherwise, you've got some of the nicest menus and graphics yet. Keep up the good work!

Thanks!!!

At 7/11/07 11:14 PM, Nuggs wrote: At 7/11/07 09:41 PM, BoMToons wrote

Ok, my 1st suggestion is to optimize it to prevent lag. Even in ie it was way laggy. It's probably due to all the filters you're using. A lot of the stuff could be drawn exactly the same way without filters (ie: thick white outlines).

Most of the white outlines are made from lines not from glow filters... so I'm shit outta luck

Lastly, use more "cacheAsBitmap" because a lot of the stuff, since it doesn't scale, wouldn't :hit the cpu as hard if it were cached as a bitmap.

this is true if the object isn't rotating (I'm pretty sure), and most of the objects I have rotate, but I did cache the clouds, the player, and all the other non-rotating items as bitmaps...

There's something causing the lag that you've missed, there's no good reason it should be lagging that much. I could reproduce the engine with the same graphics and not have any lag...not sure what it is, maybe you're not removing the items from your hitTest area or something?

As for gameplay, I'd love to see a progressive bg...like, from the depths of the earth (molten lava etc) up through different levels of the earth's crust, then into the sky, then into the atmosphere, then into space, past some planets, etc...kinda like that wonchop game that came out a while back

The only problem with that is I don't want to be considered a copy cat, have my score lowered, and risk not being on the front page...

Bah, I don't think you'd be considered a rip off any more than you already would be just with the concept alone. You need SOMETHING more interesting than just clouds on a blue BG to set you apart.

Also, I'd like to see some powerups for the level of control, so the guy's momentum gets more easily controlled

I do have power ups, but obviously they are not labeled well enough... can these kids read anyway???

I know you have powerups, but I want powerups that increase MY CONTROL of the character, it's a bit frustrating how slowly he responds, but if you put in a way to increase his responsiveness as a powerup then it wouldn't be so annoying.

also, it'd probably be good to flash up what the good stuff is and what the bad stuff is right before the game starts

I'll have instructions, this is a very preliminary version of the game

and also give some feedback in the HUD when you hit something good and when you hit something bad.

Good Idea!

Otherwise, you've got some of the nicest menus and graphics yet. Keep up the good work!

Thanks!!!

When I said "hittest area" I meant "hittest array" sorry for the typo.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to put mine up for critique in here or not, but a lot of good advice seems to be on the table, so I'm going to:

Link

Left and right arrow keys move the character
Up arrow is jump
Down arrow allows you to drop off of many platforms
Space bar throws a seed

What I'd really like some feedback on is the level of difficulty of pulling off some of the character's abilities. Mostly, the first seed in the upper-left hand corner (click the seeds to change from one to the other). When you throw that one, you'll see a flower grow on the ground where the seed hits. Click the flower to sort of "posess" it. Then use the up and down arrow keys to make it grow taller or shrink. Click back on the character to regain control of him.

Is this too difficult? Should I make him automatically go into the "posession" mode? the only problem with that is, then you can't ride the platform as it rises.

There is a bug I still need to work out with regard to the platforms you can create (the flower, and the vine-bridge), and the 3rd seed will snare enemies when they get too close to it.

Background, in case you're interested, is that this little fella is a plant-based life-form who lives in something like a State-park in Wiggi World. A group of kids on field-trip visit the park and leave litter behind them, so this little guy takes it upon himself to clean up the forest after them. You'll get more points for items that can be recycled, and your power bar will gain points (right now it is set really high for testing purposes) so that you can use his "green thumb" powers to greater and greater degree. So the moral of the story is "respect the environment" (too tree-huggish?).

The file-size is currently pretty small (182 KB), but I am afraid of the onset of lag... and having to try and do tons of optimization that I am not otherwise doing/have not coded.

At 7/12/07 03:47 PM, smokinjoeevil wrote: tons of optimization that I am not otherwise doing/have not coded.

Actually, I really didn't mean "tons" of optimization that I am not currently doing... like there is a bunch of stuff I am doing really poorly or something. I meant more like trying to find places where optimization is even possible without sacrificing content.

As said before, children are NOT stupid. They can understand that they have to click on the flower to get it to move, as long as it's told to them.

I think your game is awesome and is a shoe in for a prize from the contest :)

At 7/12/07 04:43 PM, Skeik-Sprite wrote: As said before, children are NOT stupid. They can understand that they have to click on the flower to get it to move, as long as it's told to them.

I think your game is awesome and is a shoe in for a prize from the contest :)

I know they're not stupid... and I think what I'm going to do is attach some explanatory graphics of the keys to use the first time you use any of the powers that require you to do so... as well as provide up-front instructions, of course.

And thanks for the vote of confidence. I liked the idea, and I really wanted to make sure it had some neat features in it to keep it interesting.

Excellent game. Not too complicated at all. My game is probably going to be much harder than that. Hopefully I'm not overestimating the kids ;)

That's really an excellent engine- fun and clever.

Nice job.

At 7/12/07 03:47 PM, smokinjoeevil wrote: I wasn't sure if I wanted to put mine up for critique in here or not, but a lot of good advice seems to be on the table, so I'm going to:

Link

This is looking like a really awesome game... the seeds remind me of the robo-dog stuff in the old mega-man games. I didn't figure out the clicking on the flower to control it stuff, but once I read your post about it, I went back and really enjoyed tooling around. I sincerely hope you finish this off completely because it is a great idea and I can see tons of problem-solving type levels that I would love to play using the different seed combos.

On to the criticism:

I'd like the see a lot of the outlines a bit thicker...otherwise the art is looking good with a lot of nice little touches like the animated leaves on the flower platforms.

It feels like it's lagging a bit, dunno if it's just cuz the character moves slow or what, but I give you the same optimization advice I gave nuggs about .pngs and caching as Bitmap.

There's got to be a more intuitive control scheme...generally, if you're going to use the mouse and keyboard, it's recommended to do awsd for arrow-like controls so you can have your left hand on them and your right hand on the mouse so you don't have to leave one set of keys to use the mouse...the switching back and forth can be annoying.

After you get a good set of base keys, it may be as simple as popping up some little instructions after you place down a controllable seed like an arrow pointing up with a "w" in it and an arrow pointing down with an "s" in it and another exit icon with a "spacebar" in it or something. Also, I'd recommend maybe having the seed switching in a pause menu or something like in megaman, I hate having to take my mouse away from the action to go click on the diff seed types in the corner.

Overall, best game demo I've seen yet (and most original concept), if you can get those controls to be intuitive and whip up some fun brain-teasing levels, and throw in some action elements, possibly enemies...this game is gold!

Here's an idea: Maybe have little buttons on the flowers like "up" "stop" and "down" so they're like little elevators that you can jump onto with wasd and then control with mouse clicks.

OK, since there's so much good feedback happening in this thread I thought I'd post my current, nearly complete entry. You can see it HERE. This is my first flash game so please be gentle :)

Arrow keys to move, the help is not fully complete yet so the aim of the game is just to get the highest score, if you knock out 5 germs in a row without landing you'll get a health powerup.

Still to be done: better start menu and game over screen, extend the help, sound effects, a few more graphical effects.

At the moment I'm thinking the gameplay is pretty much done, but do you think it will be too difficult for children? It's probably aimed at kids around 8-12 I would imagine, I'm not sure how that fits in with your demographic.

Anyway, can't wait to hear your thoughts!

At 7/12/07 06:18 PM, Ten0101 wrote: OK, since there's so much good feedback happening in this thread I thought I'd post my current, nearly complete entry. You can see it HERE. This is my first flash game so please be gentle :)

Arrow keys to move, the help is not fully complete yet so the aim of the game is just to get the highest score, if you knock out 5 germs in a row without landing you'll get a health powerup.

Still to be done: better start menu and game over screen, extend the help, sound effects, a few more graphical effects.

At the moment I'm thinking the gameplay is pretty much done, but do you think it will be too difficult for children? It's probably aimed at kids around 8-12 I would imagine, I'm not sure how that fits in with your demographic.

Anyway, can't wait to hear your thoughts!

Wow, another nice one. The graphical style is really nice on the in-game graphics. The physics are also cartoony and fun. It sounds like you have most of my suggestions planned already. Here are some more:

1. Different arenas to play in (maybe diff parts of the body or something)
2. Diff types of good and bad bacteria...maybe some with different "characters"
3. The physics can be a little squirrelly, but I'd probably get used to them after playing through a few times.
4. Better font for the points that you collect.

Overall, I can see this one being really addicting.

I'm SO glad to see that people have some good stuff in the works.

on 2nd play here's some more:

-It's a bit hard to tell whether you're going to take or do damage when you're approaching a bacteria...I dunno how to fix this, but maybe make it more clear which parts of your ship are vulnerable and which aren't. Maybe make the syringe larger....and not disappear.

-The graphics that show how damaged your ship is, aren't very clear either. Maybe make it more obvious that the window is cracked or the ship is dented or whatever.

Oh awesome, thanks for the great feedback! A lot of the things you mentioned were already on my to-do list but it's good to have that second opinion to show I'm going in the right direction.

You've given me some good ideas for some different characters as well, I hadn't thought of that; I might put in a couple of good characters that drop powerups or give you a shield or something.

I will be working on making it more obvious when you're damaged, the cracks that are in there now are actually leftovers from a previous incarnation of the ship. Dents are a good idea too.

It is difficult to show whether the bacteria or the ship will be damaged... I'll try implementing your suggestions, I also thought maybe I'll change the expression on the face of Dr Wiggi, make him look scared if they're coming from above or something. I may change the way collisions are detected too.

Different levels are a good idea, I wasn't sure whether I was going to continue to develop this game or just submit it and try something new, but since it seems like it will have a good chance I'll work to expand it a bit, perhaps have a map of the patient's body that the Dr is working his way through so there's some progression in there, with different backgrounds and characters each step of the way.

Thanks heaps for your feedback!

At 7/12/07 02:35 AM, BoMToons wrote: There's something causing the lag that you've missed, there's no good reason it should be lagging that much. I could reproduce the engine with the same graphics and not have any lag...not sure what it is, maybe you're not removing the items from your hitTest area or something?

No Firefox is just really bad with .swf file. I'm not bashing Mozilla... I use it too, but it isn't very good at processing .swf files
No Code, only bg and fps counter
Game with all objects and code

With all the objects in my flash I get around 1-2 fps slower than the blank screen... Maybe it is just the fps counter that is lagging, but without it i cant keep track of what the fps is... I'm stuck...

Maybe it's the gradient background? Just a thought.

At 7/12/07 05:35 PM, BoMToons wrote: Here's an idea: Maybe have little buttons on the flowers like "up" "stop" and "down" so they're like little elevators that you can jump onto with wasd and then control with mouse clicks.

That idea is actually really great. Making the controls more mouse-centric to control the flowers makes it not so annoying to go back and forth between arrow-keys and mouse control. Thanks for the advice and I will definitely encorporate this...

If there was already a platformer made I am assuming that we shouldn't try and make a platformer as well for the competition?

Also when is the new due date? Sorry if it on this page I just haven't had the chance to look.

And third I am thinking of entering this competition if any AS would like to hear what I have in mind or see some sample graphics then PM me and we can certainly work something out.

At 7/13/07 12:06 AM, crabwich wrote: If there was already a platformer made I am assuming that we shouldn't try and make a platformer as well for the competition?

Also when is the new due date? Sorry if it on this page I just haven't had the chance to look.

And third I am thinking of entering this competition if any AS would like to hear what I have in mind or see some sample graphics then PM me and we can certainly work something out.

I guess you could call Sheik's game a platformer, and there's a platformer engine that was given for download and use, but I don't see why there couldn't be one made if it's unique and good enough in it's own right.

I think BoMToons said there isn't a new due date because there's still about a month left for people to come up with stuff.

As for the AS stuff, can't help ya there.

I am guessing that the sprite sheet is there just for reference and they should not be used in any of the games we make right?

Sorry for the double post but I just thought of a really great idea for a game. I don't particularly want to post it on the forums where everyone can read it so if you are interested then a PM would be nice. A moderate amount of AS knowledge will be needed to code the game.

At 7/13/07 12:35 AM, crabwich wrote: I am guessing that the sprite sheet is there just for reference and they should not be used in any of the games we make right?

I believe BoMToons said they are there to be used if the creator doesn't have much artistic ability, but if they're using the sprites and engine given, the game better have a lot more and be really good.

I am sure he will be in here soon enough to clear things up for ya.

Yeah, the sprite sheet was provided for coders who have no artistic skills, and I said the platform engine can be used, but better have a lot more stuff added on to have a chance at prizes.

And yes, the deadline is the same as always, there's still plenty of time to turn out quality games.

I have been studying this very well intended contest for a day or so, subconsciously ever since I noticed Wiggi Rescue on the portal. I have a few ideas that are based on the values listed, and I may or may not finish them depending on things. If someone is actually interested in them, PM me (as usual). If I decide to go ahead with the ideas, I will have an example posted here soon.

My question though, it's a bit different. I realized that you're putting up quite a bit of money for this contest. It sort of got to me, especially since the arcade is new and all. Are you going to try to get the winners to produce further games for your arcade in the future?

Hey just a quick question, if a game gets submitted and isnt that bad but doesnt happen to win a prize does the creator have to keep the logos and preloader on there or is there additional sponsorship available for those type of situations?

At 7/14/07 01:51 AM, Ybom wrote: My question though, it's a bit different. I realized that you're putting up quite a bit of money for this contest. It sort of got to me, especially since the arcade is new and all. Are you going to try to get the winners to produce further games for your arcade in the future?I

It's definitely part of our motivation, we're trying to find game-makers to contract with in the future if their stuff is good.

At 7/15/07 10:48 AM, Peturo wrote: Hey just a quick question, if a game gets submitted and isnt that bad but doesnt happen to win a prize does the creator have to keep the logos and preloader on there or is there additional sponsorship available for those type of situations?

I think "officially" if you want your game in the contest, any iterations of it that you've released anywhere need to maintain the co-branding. It's only fair IMO.

We made a game as an example of the caliber of work we're looking for in the competition. Don't worry though, since we made it, it's not eligible to win anything :)

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view.php?id=
388175

Let me know what you think...we'll be adding on to it a bit tomorrow.

I think you need better instructions and a better goal. The name implies you'll be fighting other wiggies for the beats. I also don't quite grasp how we properly feed them; it's like i have to randomly choose a wiggi bug to get the beat right. However, the animations, graphics, and music do feel very polished. Once all the bugs and QA is done with it, I understand why this would be the quality you want. Thank you for the example, it's pretty nifty and informative.

id like to know if there are any Wiggi-themed vehicles or any in develpment so i know what to try to draw (and if its not to much trouble id like a couple pics or .fla's because im a scripter with no drawing talent)

thanks,
-uplinkgames